SkyNews Debate and Gun Control

Each week on the SkyNews Debate, the Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and I go toe-to-toe on issues that the producers back in London choose with audience interest and provocation in mind.

This week, (June 25) I felt we disgracefully gave airtime to Larry Pratt and his irrational and singularly idiotic views on gun control.

As I say in the program, I believe that listening to the drivel and hate he spews forth actually makes him the poster boy FOR gun control. Luckily, we also had the wonderful and brilliant Professor Chip Gallagher from LaSalle University talking about facts that the gun control wingnuts don't want the public to know.

And Armstrong had his hands full there.

Before the program began, I wrote an "editorial" showing my disgust at Pratt and his views, and my displeasure with him using our airtime. I asked the producers to let me read it in full, and they agreed.

Shamefully, Niall Paterson, sitting in for Martin Stanford as host, interrupted before I could finish, and I didn't hide my anger.

So I have reprinted here, word for word, the views I wanted and needed to express, uninterruptedly.

"Putting Mr. Pratt into perspective... over the past eight months or so that we have been doing this show, there have been guests I have disagreed with, at times vehemently. But we have never had as appalling and repulsive a guest as this man.

"Gun Owners of America is a radical, right wing, conspiracy-theory loving group he founded because he believed that the radical, right wing, conspiracy-theory loving National Rifle Association was not radical, right wing and conspiracy-theory loving enough.

"Throughout the years he has been associated in various ways with white supremacist groups, anti-Semitic groups, and survivalists and believes that “Second Amendment Rights” is all about owning enough fire power to create South American rebel-style militias... Guatemala-like death squads... capable of over-throwing the government... especially a government run by a black, socialist, communist, anti-gun, abortion loving, gay marriage loving, illegally installed president who was obviously born in Kenya.

"His statements in the wake of the massacres... of the premeditated murders of innocent people... are more than just distasteful, they are abhorrent and repugnant.

"This is a man who, after the sandy hook elementary school shootings, put the blame entirely on gun control advocates saying that they "have the blood of little children on their hands."

"He denies reality. In so doing, I actually think he is THE poster boy for gun control.

"And while he has every right to express his views, I have every right to be nauseated by them.

"And by him.

"Because, I believe, it is impossible to have an intelligent, meaningful discussion with just any old psychotic fool, I refuse to engage him. I refuse to dignify his appearance here. I refuse to justify his existence.

"I will say no more, except to add that his last name would be spelled with one t."

*****

(c) Jeffrey Robinson 2015

Here is the link to the show: http://news.sky.com/video/1507905/gun-ownership-why-so-many-deaths